Stone and Salt
by corsairr
Summary: The lady Aeducan is having a hard time with both surfacer and common folk life. Alistair gives her some incentive.
"It's just a lake," reasoned Alistair. He took a step into the water to demonstrate how harmless it was. "Surely you have water in Orzammar?"

"Of course we have water in Orzammar," Fiona snapped, bristling. Or, at least she thought so. They drank water and bathed in water, but she wasn't quite sure where it came from. She'd never seen any bodies of water except for during that one Deep Roads expedition led by Lord Ashtok Bera. Bera Thaig had been suntouched, so mossy plants grew on stone and a hotspring sat in the middle of the opening. They hadn't lingered long and none dared go near the suntouched parts of the thaig.

In essence: Yes, there were bodies of water underground, but Fiona never touched them. She put one bare foot forth and dipped one toe into the water. She jumped back and recoiled, scowling and shaking her foot dry.

Alistair was laughing at her. He was waist-deep in the water now, his hair soaked and his broad, bare chest dripping with water.

Fiona's scowl worsened. "It's cold."

"What did you expect?" He laughed again and Fiona crossed her arms over her nude chest, annoyed. He started moving towards her. "Oh, come on. I'm sorry for laughing at you. But truly, it's not so bad! And you have to bathe at some point."

"Try me."

"I really don't want to." Smiling, he held a hand out for her.

She looked down at it and arched a brow. Where she stood on the parapet overlooking the lake, she towered over him, but this was the only instant in which she did so. Side by side on level ground, Alistair was at least a foot taller than her. They'd been traveling for five days now- five days since Ostagar, five days since King Cailan's demise, five days since Loghain's betrayal and the gates of the Blight opening. Alistair was still sore, but he was starting to smile a bit more often now. Fiona had consoled him as best she could upon waking in the Wilds, but she was never very good at being sympathetic. She'd managed to get him to smile, though, and that was cute.

The past five days she'd spent getting to know him better. One can learn a lot about someone by shedding blood together. He was a formidable warrior, perhaps not better than Fiona herself but still significantly more disciplined. There was a lot of control to his fighting technique, as if he was in a stage of meditating. It reminded her of the templars she sometimes saw come through Orzammar for lyrium; once, darkspawn had slipped through their barricades during one of these exchanges and Fiona fought alongside a unit of them.

Come to find out, Alistair had trained as a templar. She took pride in guessing that beforehand. But how he fought was not all she learned these past moons: Cheese was his favorite food, and Warden blue was his favorite color (though he enjoyed a great many of colors, and didn't like playing favoritism). He could twirl a pike like no one's business and had a tattoo of a griffon on his left shoulder blade, and had a peculiar fondness for Nevarran ballads and dwarven drinking songs (Fiona shared this fondness, but she withheld that information).

Little things that even so made all the difference to Fiona. Sighing and bracing herself, she took his hand and slowly lowered herself into the water. She hissed at the chill and clutched his hand tighter, only to shove it away angrily the moment she realized she was still holding it. She sucked in her breath and kept her arms above the water.

Alistair tittered. "Don't worry, you'll get used to it."

Duncan told her she'd get used to porridge, too, but she never did.

"Couldn't we have found a hotspring instead?" she growled.

"I saw one earlier actually, but you seemed lost in thought. I didn't want to interrupt." Smiling contentedly, he scrubbed some dirt off of his neck.

Fiona glared. "Are you kidding me?" she exclaimed.

"What? I'm a considerate person!"

"You have needlessly subjected me to a freezing cold murky bath."

He paused in thought, then nodded, seeing her point. "That's a good argument. Alright, you have my apologies."

Duncan had been wrong about getting used to porridge, but Fiona did warm up to the lake's temperature. She eventually moved away from Alistair and the ledge, deeper into the lake until the water reached her collarbones. She scrubbed through the tangles in her curls, rubbed all the muck and grime and blood from her skin, then removed herself from the lake to wash her clothes.

And of course, she had no idea how to do that. Up until now, she'd had servants to do this kind of stuff for her. Sitting on her knees, she held a dirty tunic in one hand and dirty skirts in the other, dumbfounded.

Alistair climbed out of the water with a following of splashes. He shook out his hair with his hand. "What's up?" he asked, tilting his head.

She hated to admit that she didn't know what she was doing. But this guy had a griffon tattoo and twirled pikes in his free time. "I don't know how to wash clothes," she muttered, almost too quiet to hear.

"Ah." He knelt beside her and took the clothes from her grasp, fingers brushing against hers as he did so. Her heart fluttered involuntarily. "I'll help. Just this once." He shouldered her playfully and she allowed a dainty smile of her own.

She hadn't imagined lower-class life to be so difficult. They hunted and made their own food, washed their own clothes, bathed in cold lakes and could scarcely afford a hut to live in. It was a hard life to adjust to, as Fiona was painfully learning. She yearned for the days where she had servants to dote on her every whim. Those were gone, though, and now she had to fight tooth and nail to get them back.

She watched Alistair as he worked. Large hands with bruised knuckles dipped and squeezed the clothing, working deftly. The thick muscles in his arms and chest shifted and flexed whenever he moved his arm just right, still wet and shiny from the lake water. Water dripped from his honey-blond hair to his eyebrow, to his cheek, past his lip...

Fiona looked away, blushing. For once, she was thankful for her sunburn. It was a sufficient disguise for such frivolous affairs of the heart. But it was too late; Alistair had caught her watching him. His smile told all.

"What? Do I look strange to you? I suppose I would, being a human in a dwarf's eyes and all."

"Strange?" Fiona repeated pensively. "That's... one word for it." He did bare a stark contrast to the dwarves of Orzammar. His cheeks were as bare as a boy's save for some untrimmed stubble, his nose was all wrong, and though his build was thick and muscular, he was just so tall. Some of the women in Orzammar had beards like the men; it wasn't uncommon for such sights, but Fiona had never grown one. Most noble caste women didn't. Lesser castes and Dust Town girls were often seen with beards as big and burly as the men, though. Anyhow, where Alistair was tall, Fiona was short; where Alistair's lips were rather thin, Fiona's were plump; where Alistair's skin was olive-toned, Fiona's was the color of copper, tinged red in the sunburned parts of her arms and cheeks.

Alistair arched a brow at her, and for a moment she worried that she'd offended him. "Then what's another word for it, pray tell?" he prompted. Her worry relaxed when he smiled.

"Handsome," she blurted.

His face went red. The blush crept from his face, to his ears, to his bulging chest. Then he laughed, nervous and high-pitched. "I... oh. I hadn't thought..."

She looked away, grimacing. _Stupid,_ she scolded herself. _Now this stupid human's going to think you're into him. Stupid, stupid, stupid._ She tugged at her linen shorts nervously, suddenly aware of how her chest was nude. Dwarves had little time for modesty, especially nobles who were constantly dressed and undressed by servants, but still...

She stood up quickly and picked up her brown wool cloak. Hastily, she tied it around her shoulders and tugged it around her body to obscure her breasts. "I should get back to camp at once. We've been gone... quite some time." That wasn't true. The sun had only shifted slightly. Duncan had been the one to teach her that little trick- how to make sense of time through the sun's movement. In Orzammar, they had clockwork to do that for them.

"But your clothes-"

"At once, I said!" Cheeks burning, she turned and hurried through the forest. Her feet felt so light, and her heart so fast. _The way he smiled at me..._

She groaned under her breath and stopped once she was certain Alistair was a league away. She pressed her back to a tree and slid down until her rear hit the ground, then pulled her knees to her chest and entertained the idea of Alistair's hands on her body rather than her clothes. She wondered how his smile would feel when pressed against her lips, and how his blush would feel when she ran her hands over it...

 _This is foolish._ Bristling, she got to her feet and gathered up invisible dignity. She marched her way through the forest until she reached the clearing where their camp was set up. Morrigan had chosen to exclude herself from the rest of them, pitching her tent closer to the trees. Leliana, Sten, and Dog were all situated around the fire. When Dog caught wind of his mistress's approach, he lurched to his feet and trotted over to her, panting and wagging his tail happily.

Fiona reached down to pat his head affectionately. _You have competition for my heart, boy,_ she thought, dismayed. _And it's no conscious decision of mine own._

When morning came, the sun that Fiona despised so fiercely rose with grace and light. They were setting off to Redcliffe when Alistair approached her. He was blushing, almost like he hadn't stopped since the night prior. His smile was bashful and his gaze finicky.

"You didn't give me a chance to return the favor last night," he told her.

She tugged a dark blue scarf over her head- the same scarf Duncan had given her, that first morbid day on the surface. The ends were frayed and the material thin but she kept it all the same. "What favor?" she asked, knowing the answer already.

"You called me handsome," he said, rubbing the back of his neck nervously. "I... um... just wanted to tell you that the feeling is mutual."

"You think I am handsome?" she deadpanned.

"No! No, I..." He sighed, aggravated by his own folly. "I meant to say I think you're beautiful."

 _Damn it,_ she thought. _Damn him._ She straightened up, raising her chin indignantly. She wouldn't let these surfacers get the jump on her. Nor that _fucking_ sky. Sky and surfacer alike looked down on dwarves, she knew. They expected all dwarven folk to be no-good drunks and cowards. "Well, you would not be the first to think so," she stated.

At his crestfallen expression, she knew he was genuine, and she felt bad.

She sighed quietly. "But thank you."

He rose his eyes again, and with his rising gaze came a smile. That stupid, stupid smile that she'd never admit likage to. "Good. I mean, you're welcome. And thank you, for... you know." He tittered anxiously. "Right then. Off to Redcliffe."

He walked on ahead and Fiona watched him go, eyes traveling from the back of his head to his waist, where they paused. "Alistair!" she called. He turned abruptly and Fiona laughed. "You forgot your sword."


End file.
